Posted on 04/16/2010 11:40:18 AM PDT by Willie Green
In the words of Adam Sandler, "No student can escape the magic of Lunch Lady Land.” This holds true for students under the reign of cafeteria workers’ punishment for a food fight at Atlantic City High School this week.
Cheese sandwiches were the only items on the lunch menu for high school students Wednesday and Thursday. The two pieces of bread with one slice of orange-colored cheese cuisine was the only offering at the cafeteria as retribution for a cell-phone-coordinated food fight that broke out recently.
Parents were outraged.
“It’s a prison meal,” Bridgitte Reid, a parent of one high school student, told the Press of Atlantic City. “They can’t do this.”
Reid stormed the cafeteria and seized one of the sad sandwiches as evidence of the “crime.”
District Superintendent Frederick Nickles first told the Press of Atlantic City that he knew nothing about the use of cheese sandwiches as a punitive weapon. He said they were only used to feed kids who have nothing to eat for lunch on any given day.
Nickles later reneged on his statements, saying that the sparse menu was a common punishment for food fights.
“It’s been the policy of the school board for many years that if there is a food-throwing incident, what occurs is we will supply the basic food requirement,” Nickles said. “It’s been effective over the years.”
Nickels said that the lunch period that engaged in the food fight was the only one denied their hoagies and grinders.
“Why should my student be forced to eat this?” Reid said. “There’s nothing on this. No mayo, no nothing. It’s disgusting.”
The regular lunch menu, which may or may not include navy beans, will be served to all students today.
Words just fail...sigh...
Did the school still bill government full price for the free lunches?
“Parents were outraged.”
Unreal. Poor kids. I bet it hurt their self-esteem.
The local high school has a Chik-fil-A in its cafeteria here.
How do government schools resemble prisons? Let's add punishment “prison meals” to the list!
Public school is child abuse. Complaining parents should already have their kids in private school.
In my school the lunch ladies would have difficulty driving home with four flat tires.
“It’s a prison meal,” Bridgitte Reid, a parent of one high school student, told the Press of Atlantic City. “They can’t do this.”
_________________________________________________
A prison meal? If only.
I suggest Mrs. Reid prepare her lttle darling a good home cooked meal to take to school in a paper bag.
I suspect the “outraged parents” were also those whose children started the food fights.
This homeschooled family is having sloppy joes for supper.
Exactly, this is a form of union work slowdown in a mission critical function of the public school system, this is just not billing fraud, it's probably illegal under Taft-Hartley and the federal School Lunch and Breakfast Program.
The school lunch lobby: a charmed federal food program that no longer just feeds the hungry. Douglas Besharov, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has been the most outspoken critic of the traditional thinking that surrounds school food programs. "We're still feeding the poor as if they're starving," he says, alluding to the original intent of the school lunch programs. In testimony before Congress in 2003 and in a long article in the Washington Post in 2002, Besharov argued that school meals give children too many calories. Worse, they do so even if they follow the new program guidelines. Specifically, federal rules require a school lunch to provide 33 percent of the recommended daily allowance of calories; a school breakfast should provide 25 percent. That leaves only 42 percent of the recommended number of calories to be consumed outside of school, more than covered by one "supersized" hamburger and a soda.
How many kids in school lunch programs have a cellphone?
My kids’ school doesn’t have a cafeteria (small Christian school). A prison meal of a cheese sandwich, milk and fruit is often sent in a brown sack by this cruel mom.
That lunch sounds darned good to me.
Bridgitte, is that observation from personal experience?
Mrs. Reid, you are free to send a sack lunch to school so your little darling can have something else.
Imagine getting that in a school lunch as punishment (for the big price of $1.75).... poor cruel world.
If I were in charge, if the kids orchestrated a food fight, lunch would be in the classroom and brought from home. My high school principal was an ex-army man and 6’5”. He would have closed the cafeteria for the year for such stuff (and probably made us clean the cafeteria with toothbrushes :-) )
Hey Bridgitte, Try acting like a real parent and make your own kids lunch instead of having the government do it for you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.